As a leader in your organization, your success will directly impact the success of the people on your team. Setting effective goals for yourself is one of the first and best ways you can lead your employees.

Decide on Objectives and Responsibilities

To know where to start with your individual goals, look at what your team needs to accomplish. What is your driving purpose? Is it to maintain and develop your company’s website and mobile app to increase business? Are you the front line of customer service that keeps clients happy and coming back for more? Whatever the answer, follow these steps to make sure your objectives stay top of mind and actionable:

Define the goals: Once you know your team’s purpose, you can figure out what you need to achieve. Identify a few key objectives to drive towards. And don’t forget that, as the leader, you should also build into your goals ways to support your team.

Define the tactics: Now that you’ve got the what, figure out the how. What is your plan for hitting these goals? For instance, a goal of strong employee engagement would require tactics such as regular one-on-one meetings with your workers, plus leveraging an anonymous survey tool to stay on top of team morale.

Define measurability: Establish benchmarks that you can use to evaluate your progress along the way. These can be numbers, such as getting 1,000 new subscribers to your customer email, or deadlines, such as hiring a new graphic designer by the end of the month.

Get manager buy-in: Your goals should be informed by your company’s mission, vision, and values. Check in with your own leaders to make sure that you’re achieving objectives that will serve the organization’s overall purpose.

Gather the Tools You Need

Your next step is to go through each goal and list the resources that are necessary for you to get the job done.

Materials: What are the things you need to do your job? It could be small, like tablets for your team so you can call up documents during meetings, or large-scale projects like an improved content management system.

People: Do you have the team that you need to make things happen? Figure out if there’s a hole in your team’s expertise, or if you need additional team members to manage the workload.

Outside help: Don’t limit your list to the resources within the company. You may find that you need to consult with external agencies or send occasional projects to contractors.

Setting your personal goals is the groundwork you need to start your leadership off on the right foot. Now that you know what you need to do, let’s take a look at how you’ll work with your team to succeed.